23. April 2009

Starting the summer semester lecture series on „Post-Medium Architecture“ Mark Wigley focuses on the “network” as a primary medium of contemporary architecture. Defining the architect as someone who does more than designing buildings but as public intellectual who speculates on possible new worlds, Wigley will –among others- refer to his research on a symposium on the evolution of human settlement that was held on the Greek urban planner Constantinos Doxiadis´ yacht „New Hellas“ and included Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan and thirty –two other protagonists.
 
Mark Wigley is the Dean of Columbia University's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and also teaches as a Guest Professor at Städelschule Architecture Class. He curated „ Deconstructivist Architecture“ He has also served as cuartor at The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Drawing Center, New York; Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal; and Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam. An accomplished scholar and design teacher, he has written extensively on the theory and practice of architecture, and is the author of „The Architecture of Deconstruction: Derrida's Haunt“ (MIT Press, 1993); „White Walls, Designer Dresses: The Fashioning of Modern Architecture“ (MIT Press, 1995); and „Constant's New Babylon: The Hyper-Architecture of Desire“ (Uitgeverij 010, 1998). In addition to numerous essays on art and architecture, he co-edited, with Catherine de Zegher, „The Activist Drawing: Situationist Architectures From Constant's New Babylon to Beyond“ (MIT Press, 2001) and is one of the founding editors of Volume magazine.